Blast in Pakistan’s Quetta kills 7

A road side blast killed at least 7 Police officers and wounded 24 others in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

The attack targeted a truck carrying police personnel on the city’s main Saryab road on Wednesday morning, local police official Muhammad Akbar told Al Jazeera.

He said the death toll could rise.

Sarfaraz Bugti, the home minister for Baluchistan, visited the explosion site. Later, he said such attacks would not break the morale of the security forces.

Television footage from the scene showed the mangled and scorched wreckage of the truck lying by the side of the road. Police cordoned off the area around the blast site immediately following the attack.

Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, has often been at the centre of attacks by both religious armed groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and armed ethnic Baloch separatists fighting for independence from Pakistan.

Last week, five people were killed in an attack targeting the city’s minority Hazara Shia Muslim community.

Earlier this month, a suicide bomber killed 18 people when he targeted a Sufi shrine near the town of Jhal Magsi, about 165km south of Quetta.

The province has also been the site of a decade-long armed separatist campaign by ethnic Baloch fighters who are fighting for independence in the resource-rich province.